London Blues Read online

  The chance discovery of a 30-year-old blue movie leads back to the film’s maker, Tim Purdom, and the London of the late fifties and early sixties. Purdom was a pioneer of the B&W British porno film and a figure on the periphery of the Profumo sex scandal. He directed eight films…but who was directing him and what was their hidden agenda? And where is Tim now?

  London Blues explicitly and unremittingly details the hidden world of Soho vice and London’s demi-monde at the time when the grey 1950s were giving way to the ‘swingin’ sixties’. It is a dramatic and compelling venture into the secret history of our time - a provocative and totally original novel.

  ‘The quintessential Soho book’ – Loaded

  ‘A forceful, striking thriller’ – Time Out

  ‘The most intriguing British writer since Derek Raymond’ – Bizarre

  ‘Fifties atmosphere, powerfully evoked’ - Literary Review

  LONDON BLUES

  Touch Blue Your wish will come true. – Mother Goose’s Melody (circa 1765)

  Anthony Frewin

  http://www.noexit.co.uk/index.php

  For N and S,

  who might be tempted to agree with Ambrose Bierce’s definition of a novel.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  1: On Green Dolphin Street

  2: Sometimes I’m Happy

  Part Two

  1: All the Things You Are

  2: Intermission Riff

  3: Red Top

  4: Epistrophy

  5: Dizzy Atmosphere

  6: Algo Bueno

  7: Misterioso

  8: Brilliant Corners

  Part Three

  1: Bye-ya

  L’Envoi: Now’s the Time

  A Note on the Typeface

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Part One

  1

  On Green Dolphin Street

  God has a hard-on for paranoids.

  – Dan Nordau (circa 1968)

  IF TIM PURDOM hadn’t made all of those black-and-white porno movies in London back in the early 1960s he’d probably still be alive today. I mean officially alive … because, of course, nobody can be sure, really sure, that he is dead. They hope he is, but they don’t know.

  If you’re quietly going about shooting blue films with static camera set-ups and too much use of the zoom lens in dingy single rooms at the Hotel Exquisite, Bayswater, featuring a Notting Hill Gate minicab driver flat on his back with one buxom girl astride his loins and another astride his face, for example, what enemies are you going to make? Eh? What enemies? You might get arrested, but you’re not going to make any enemies. But Tim did. Somehow, somewhere, he did.

  Tim was a pioneer of the British porno film. He directed nine films altogether, but who was directing him and what was their agenda, and where is Tim now?

  I’ll tell you where it started for me, give you the background and recount to you how it unfolded and then you’ll know as much as I do. See what sense, if any, you can make of it.

  Gibbous moon rising. A shy wind through the trees. Susurrus. November. Late in the year. Late in the day. A fat Saturday meandering its way to an end and merging insensibly with a lazy Sunday.

  I pulled the curtain across, turned over in the bed and lit a cigarette. The room was dark now aside from the television. I was watching a video of Mike Hodges’ Get Carter. It’s a noir masterpiece – the kind of movie that’s produced about once every twenty years in the British film industry.

  Michael Caine is Jack Carter, a gangster whose brother has been found dead in Newcastle, apparently from an accident – he’d been drinking and driving. Carter thinks it’s fishy. There’s more to it. Jack has a nose for villainy.

  It’s a film about nasty people in nasty situations. Jack Carter may be a crook but he’s self-righteous and determined. He doesn’t flinch at cruelty. He’s smart and deliberate. And he’s got self-respect.

  The film opens on Carter standing behind French windows looking out. He’s with some gangsters, the ones he works for in London and they’re enjoying a slide showing of black-and-white porno stills projected on a screen.

  Caine is looking pensive and mean. He’s worried and concerned. He’s got a different agenda and the other thugs sense this.

  ‘We don’t want you to go up north, Jack.’

  But Jack is determined. He’s already made up his mind.

  Then Jack’s on the train heading north from King’s Cross. He’s looking at the other passengers and out the window and reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely.

  There are evening shots and then it’s night as the train pulls into Newcastle-upon-Tyne station. Newcastle in the north of England.

  Later, there’s a superb cameo in the film of a provincial gangland boss, Kinnear, played by John Osborne, the playwright. Kinnear speaks with a semi-educated nasally voice that has a built-in resignation.

  Jack is rescued from some hoods who are chasing him by Kinnear’s girlfriend in a white sports car. This is Glenda.

  Glenda takes Jack back to her flat. They make love on her bed, reflected in the large mirror that serves as a headboard. Afterwards she goes to the bathroom and runs a bath. She lies in it smoking a cigarette, her heavy make-up still in place. She’s smoking the cigarette like it’s the last one she’ll ever have and, indeed, it is.

  Beside the bed is an 8mm projector. A roll of film is laced up and ready to turn over. It’s a blue film. Local porno. Glenda has already said she appears in it. Jack switches the projector on. The projector turns over and throws a picture on to the small screen at the foot of the bed.

  The film is a mute black-and-white production called Teacher’s Pet. A schoolgirl gets out of a car. Inside a house she is shown into a room by a ‘mistress’ played by Glenda.

  As Jack watches he realises that the young girl is his brother’s daughter (though she may well be his daughter, the film is ambiguous). Tears silently roll down Jack’s face as he stares at the screen. The drama unfolds. Set pieces. Jack knows what is coming next. A bit of this and then a bit of that. Anyone can write the script.

  As I’m watching Michael Caine watch the film the sound is cut. I can see Carter call out something to Glenda in the bathroom. She mouths something but the sound has gone. And now the picture goes too. It’s there and then it isn’t and I’m left with a black screen with streaking white noise. From downstairs I hear the grandfather clock chime midnight.

  Fuck!

  I paid £15 for this bootleg tape. A prime copy of the full uncut version … supposedly.

  I run the tape fast forward. Nothing. Further fast forward. Still nothing. Just blackness.

  As I light another cigarette the screen catches my eye. The black has given way to a solid grey, as though something is about to appear. I stare at the screen waiting for Michael Caine and the rest of Get Carter. I wait and the grey remains. Suddenly, in black and white, there’s some film leader and the rapidly descending numbers of 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. They’re over in as many seconds and the screen is now white. Then:

  FUCKADUCK FILMS

  presents

  The words have been handwritten on white card with a thick black marker. The first line in caps and the second in lower case.

  The card very nearly fills the screen. It’s being held by someone whose fingers can be seen in the two top corners. Fingers with long false fingernails painted red. I assume it’s red as the film is grainy black and white, and scratched.

  And now a second card appears:

  in association with

  PRICK-A-DILLY PRODUCTIONS

  rapidly followed by a third:

  THE BOYFRIEND’S

  SURPRISE VISIT

 
; From the title alone I’d guess this is an authentic 1960s blue movie. A genuine slice of the underside of Swingin’ London. A porno pic. A blue movie. A stag. A smoker. A loop. Call it what you will.

  Is it here? Am I going to see it?

  Yes.

  The opening shot. Two of them. A blonde. A brunette. Two dolly birds in their late teens, early twenties. Both with the heavy eye make-up one associates with graduates of Dusty Springfield University. The brunette is wearing a floral patterned dress and white high-heeled shoes. Her hair is cut short. She has a pixie face with small eyes and large lips. The blonde has her hair straight and uncut. She’s wearing a black skirt and a white blouse. She’s the more attractive of the two but there’s something hard about her angular features. She’s stealing glances at the camera every so often and holding herself back. She would rather not be doing this but for some reason she is. The brunette is playing the role to the full.

  The two girls are sitting on the floor of a room that looks like a bedsit (and indeed it is, or was). In front of them is a portable record player with an LP spinning. They are swooning over some photographs of Cliff Richard in a magazine, kissing him, holding him to their breasts, closing their eyes and thinking how wonderful it must be to be possessed by such a fella.

  The room interests me more now than the girls. To their left is a small old threadbare two-seater sofa which has been put hard against the footboard of a high double bed, one of those old beds that stands about a metre off the ground. I remember as a kid being taken on holidays in the 1950s when every hotel room had just such a bed. They were ancient even then. Massive hardwood head-and footboards that looked like they would last a million years and, indeed, would have had not changing fashions ousted them. I can only see about a third of the bed and on it seems to be a quilted eiderdown, and not the more usual candlewick bedspread, usually a sine qua non of British sixties porno pix. The other obligatory prop of the genre is the Lloyd Loom chair but I can’t see one in frame. Should the camera pan on the tripod, however, I would bet my pristine first edition copy of The Crying of Lot 49 that one would sail into view (it didn’t, so just as well). In the background some heavy ceiling-to-floor curtains have been closed over the windows that occupy the centre of a wall with peeling arabesque wallpaper. To the right of the drapes – a tailor’s dummy, a torso bereft of limbs on a stand. Is this going to feature in the action or is it just standing there in splendid surrealist isolation?

  On the right wall was a sink in the corner with an odd-looking Ascot heater above it. The Ascot was the object that officially confirmed a room had changed its identity and was now a bedsit. This was objective, scientific proof that nobody could dispute. Landlords put them in for quick, cheap hot water so the renters wouldn’t clutter the bathroom they shared with ten others (indeed, in some cases, it obviated the need for a bathroom altogether).

  On this side of the sink was a table and above it, pinned to the wallpaper, were postcards and photographs. Then a big bulky armchair, a close relative to and contemporary of the sofa, followed by a largish bookcase that disappears from frame.

  I wondered where this bedsitter was? Earls Court was the favourite locale, and if not there South Kensington or Swiss Cottage? No, Swiss Cottage did not seem right. How about Ladbroke Grove? More likely. A pound on Earls Court then, 50 pence on South Ken and 25 on the Grove. I would later find that my last bet was topographically the nearest: this little example of the secret cinema was shot in Bayswater, on Porchester Road, near the top of Queensway, a little over three-quarters of a mile to the east of Ladbroke Grove.

  The camera is still statically staring down at the girls who continue cooing and oohing at Cliff. I’m wondering what will happen next? A dream sequence with a Cliff clone? And, God Almighty, there were enough of them about in the late fifties and early sixties! Hard to credit, eh?

  The blonde looks to the camera and then quickly looks away. Whoever is behind the camera is giving her directions and telling her not to look into the lens. She stands up, kicks her shoes off, pulls up her dress, takes her panties down, steps out of them and throws them towards the sink. All of these actions are done with an expression of bored defiance – I don’t have to do this! Pouty and spoilt. Very well, if I have to, then.

  The brunette looks up from Cliff and says something to the blonde. She says something in reply and then sits down on the floor peering over the brunette’s shoulders at the photographs. The brunette turns and gently pushes the blonde back until she is flat on the carpet with her legs towards the camera. The blonde reaches over for the magazine and is reunited with Cliff as the brunette lifts her skirt, opens her legs, and begins gently massaging her almost hairless blonde pussy, all glistening and shiny (with baby oil?). The blonde begins moving her hips in a circular motion as the brunette’s fingers explore more deeply. The camera zooms in until the action largely fills the frame. Now the brunette’s head comes into view, led by her tongue which follows the course taken by her fingers over the labia and on to the clit. Her hair keeps falling forward and obscuring the action and, it seems, responding to instructions the brunette quickly pushes it back behind her ear (the punters have to see what is going on). She’s licking with her eyes closed, giving herself up to the part.

  The camera pulls back slowly to the full framing of the opening footage. The two girls stand up and begin undressing until they are both naked. They embrace and run their hands up and down each other’s bodies. The blonde is still shooting glances at the camera.

  They walk to the left and the camera, still on the tripod, pans and follows them without moving from its original position. The blonde sits on the edge of the bed, opens her legs, and the brunette goes down on her again. The blonde, to show how much she is really enjoying this, opens her mouth, rolls her head and stares at the ceiling.

  I can now see more of the room. Behind the bed, against the wall to the left of the curtains is a mirrored dressing table piled high with books, mainly paperbacks. Above it is a painting in an ornate, carved if now worn frame. The glass appears to be cracked and the years of dirt, grime and, no doubt, cigarette smoke render it impossible to identify, at least on a video dupe of a twenty-five-year-old 8mm loop.

  On this side of the bed at the head is a small, low bedside table with a Bakelite radio, an overflowing ashtray and some more paperbacks. By the foot of the bed is a squat television on an upturned packing carton angled for viewing from the bed.

  Above the bed is a large poster of … Charlie Parker! Bird is holding his alto and smiling. He’s in a suit. One of those striped double-breasted creations the boppers favoured. He’s staring out across the bedroom as the blonde and brunette gently rock to and fro in a sixty-nine position, the brunette uppermost. Bird’s presence strikes me as incongruous, there’s something too hip about him for a British blue movie. The ambient décor of home-grown stags has always been kitsch, terminal kitsch. If ever there’s a painting on the wall it’s the Oriental girl with green skin framed in white plastic that Boots the Chemists used to sell. That or a painting of a steam train or a Spitfire or the Italian kid with tears in his eyes. But Bird?

  The couple uncouple and the brunette produces an unzipped banana from somewhere and gently inserts it into the blonde’s vagina. The blonde starts staring at the ceiling again and impersonating ecstasy. The camera now moves: it and the tripod upon which it is fixed are lifted, carried nearer the bed, and set down. A slow zoom in to show the magical wedding of banana and labia in glistening, anatomical detail. The brunette’s hand moves the fruit in, out, in and around. She’s wearing false nails painted red, or certainly a dark colour. Were these the hands featured in the title card at the beginning?

  After what seems an eternity of reciprocating motion the camera pulls back to the medium shot. The director should have told the blonde this because she is caught unawares. Instead of abandoning herself to the plateaux of pleasure she’s scratching her nose and yawning. Somebody does say something to her because in a trice she�
�s back to rolling her head and staring at the ceiling. And still the banana hasn’t worn out. The brunette is diligently, if not mindlessly, pumping away with it.

  Looking at the part of the room now visible and linking it with what was seen of the right-hand side I could see it was pretty spacious. The ceiling is high too. This is in a Victorian town house carved up into bedsits. The wall on the right was probably put in to divide the room.

  The film so far has been one take. The first cut now occurs: same camera set-up with the two girls on the bed. The brunette is kneeling down with her buttocks towards the camera. The blonde is listlessly masturbating her with the neck of a bottle. The camera zooms in to show the penetration in greater detail but the available light at this angle is limited.

  Another cut and the girls are fondling each other’s breasts and kissing. The lens gently zooms in until lips and two extended touching tongues fill the screen. There’s a slow pull back to a medium shot of the girls sitting on the edge of the bed. The brunette opens her legs and pulls back her lips as far as they will go. The blonde touches her with a hesitant middle finger and then moves it down and into her until it is lost within. The zoom lens brings the subject forward until it fills the whole screen. It holds for several beats and then pulls back as the blonde removes her finger and the brunette closes her legs.

  The girls are now startled by something off-screen. A noise, perhaps? They duck under the bed’s covers and wait. From camera right a figure walks into frame. He stands staring at the bed with his back to the camera. He’s wearing tight-fitting cord trousers, Chelsea boots and a dark shirt. His hair is blond and longish (for the time), coming to just over his ears. He steps forward and pulls back the eiderdown to reveal the two naked girls underneath doing their best to act sheepish and embarrassed. He undresses quickly and pulls the girls from the bed. They kneel down in front of him, one on either side. The guy looks like he’s in his early twenties. His features are sharp but not stern, almost like a young Paul Newman. He’s smiling and enjoying himself.